For years the Israeli media and numerous politicians have come under criticism
in some circles for using words such as “settlements” and “West Bank,” with the
critics arguing that these are negative terms that play into the Palestinian
narrative.

While that criticism has had little dent on the Israeli use of
these terms, the Palestinian Authority for its part has shown that it is well
aware of the importance of words in framing an argument, and has issued a book
of guidelines of the “proper” phrases to be used in talking about the
conflict.

“Out” are words such as “Israel” and “Magen David,” to be
replaced instead by “Israeli colonialism” and “Six-pointed star.”

The
Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) issued a release Tuesday highlighting the
existence on the PA Ministry of Information website of this guide for
Palestinian politically correct terms. According to the PMW, this guideline – a
book called Terminology in Media, Culture and Politics – provides a valuable
peephole into the Palestinian Authority’s refusal to deny legitimacy to the
Jewish state.

The introduction to the book, according to a PMW
translation, reads, “Political, cultural and media terminology has been a
fundamental tool in the Arab- Palestinian/ Zionist-Israeli conflict throughout
the past century... [Today,] Israeli and American spreading of [these] poisoned
terms continues, with its penetration through the media into broad spheres of
world public opinion.”

According to the introduction, “the Israeli
terminology acts to distort the Palestinian national struggle, it turns the
essence of the Zionist endeavor from a racist, colonialist endeavor into an
endeavor of self-definition and independence for the Jewish
people.”

According to the document, the Ministry of Information held a
symposium in 2009 on the subject of terminology in culture, politics and the
media and came up with a list of unacceptable and acceptable terms.

For
example, the words “Palestinian terror” is not to be used, to be replaced
instead by “resistance.”

There are no “Palestinian terrorists,” only
“resistance members, and “suicide bombing operations” don’t exist, having been
replaced by “martyrdom-seeking operations.” In this world there is no Israeli
defense minister, only an “Israeli minister of war,” the Israel Defense Forces
has morphed into the “Israeli Occupation Forces,” and the separation barrier is
the “racist separation fence.”

Among the acceptable terms are “withdrawal
from occupied territory,” instead of “Israeli redeployment;” “Arab Jerusalem,”
instead of “east Jerusalem;” and the “1967 borders” instead of the “Green
Line.”

PMW heads Itamar Marcus and Nan and Jacques Ziberdik write that
the terminology the Palestinians have approved is significant because it
“accurately reflects PA beliefs, policies and ideology,” which they describe as
denying “Israel’s right to exist” and glorifying “the murder of Israelis and
Jews, including civilians, as heroic ‘resistance.’”